


The Tragedy of the Rain

by Transistance



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Autumn, Narcissism, Other, Rain, Spirits, Unrequited Love, Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 04:38:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5115968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transistance/pseuds/Transistance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grell's limerence leads her to seek out the aid of a spirit for help, which goes as badly as can be expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Echo

**Author's Note:**

> Based and referencing the Greek legend "Echo and Narcissus".

☔

There's thunder in the trees.

It bends their branches, causes their limbs to thrash and leaves to fall. Each bough creaks and groans, straining in the wind to free themselves of the shackles of the earth; the rain sloughs down their hard bodies, saturating the deep green moss and slicking the exposed bark dark.

The weather, the mud and chill that it brings, the overbearing imminence of danger – none of these factors bother the figure that hurries though the night. Cloaked and hooded in a burgundy stained black by the water, the man – or woman? It's impossible to tell in the haze and drum of the rain – runs, moving with the purposeful stride that decries a life in which moving quickly is essential.

Their speed prevents them from deliberating properly, poor as their sight must be in this rain, and the mist that curls though the undergrowth in this part of the forest can't be helping either. They cry out when they stumble over the lip of a river bank and skid down to the edge of the water, roaring, rushing, hungry.

The figure stands, brushing themselves off, and peers around. There's no confusion in the gesture, and it's only a moment before they are moving again; walking now, although still at speed, careful not to slip again. They follow the river upstream, the pebbles clattering out from under their feet only to be lost in the constantly swirling eddies of the path. They walk and walk, and walk. The trees leer and the river waits and the figure ignores them both just as thoroughly as they are ignoring the wind and rain.

It takes time. It takes hours, in fact; the uphill terrain is conquered inch by inch even as it attempts to drive the intruder down, sucking at their shoes and splashing up the edges of the cloak. But eventually the peak is crossed; the apex of the climb is beaten, and for a moment lightning illuminates a spring, pooling in a hollow below only to run out downstream. And in spite of the beating rhythm of the downpour, the surface is mirror-still unbroken by and disquiet. It may as well be glass.

The night's shadow hangs heavy over the glade around the spring casting the grass darker than the rest of the woods under the eaves of a looming circle of trees, and the figure stares up into the black sky for a moment as though despairing before crouching down to run a gloved hand through the grass. No, not grass – the earth is carpeted in small, strong flowers, each as perfect as the next. 

“I'm here to make a deal.”

The hollow falls silent, the pattering background hush still falling, but inconsequential. The words are thrown back, turned over and tasted, and they murmur around the air shimmering.

_Deal, deal, deal..._

“Yes,” the figure says, sounding a little more sure of themselves. Their voice is strange; epicene and lilting, it sounds as though it belongs as much to the dark storm as the echo does. It's a dangerous voice, and the quaver does nothing to betray that. “I need you to help me.”

 _Help me,_ repeats the echo. _Help me_.

“I need,” they say, and it's louder now, the storm, their voice; “Love. I need you to make a man love me.”

 _Love me,_ says the wind, hushed. _Love... me._

“If I bring him here, can you help me? Can you change him so that he can see me for who I am? Can you?”

_You, you, you... Can._

Within the hood breaks a smile; wide and jagged and full of relief. “ _Thank_ you,” they breathe. “What do you want in exchange?”

_Want in exchange... Want in exchange. Exchange._

This time, the stranger doesn't appear to hear. They're twisting their hands together as though in either nervousness or glee, head tilted slightly as they stare into the undistorted pool. “I'll do anything,” they say distractedly, and the wind picks up suddenly, whipping damp leaves and wet drops up around them.

_Anything, anything, anything..._

☔

It's raining in the London Dispatch.

Not literally, exactly. But the years have somehow eroded a hole in the roof, and the water that's flooding the streets and slamming against the windows is now also unfortunately drip-drip-dripping down into the office room of one Collections administrator, who is getting steadily ticked off.

Drip, drip drip, drip. Secretarial have kindly gifted him a bucket so as to stop the water from eating through the wooden floor, which has the unfortunate result of amplifying the noise of each drop a hundredfold, backed up with the hollow metallic ring. He shakes himself, tries not to hear it, but its impossible to work in these conditions.

The one positive side effect to this invasive noise is that whilst it prevents him from paying attention to his papers, it is also doing very well at keeping him from paying attention to Grell, who is draped half over him and half over the desk in what would usually be a distracting and highly irritating fashion. But as it is, the more William tries to listen to her words, the more they are sluiced away by the robotic drip drip, drip.

She's bubbling away about how _awful_ everything is and how her workload's unfair and how _dreadful_ , Will, dear, the weather is – that, at least, he can agree on. But the words slip past and are carried away on the current of her woe-begotten musing, so he does not deign to comment. Whether he'd even be able to fish out something intelligent enough to say with the rhythm steadily liquefying his mind he's not so sure.

Some time later – he's gotten through exactly three papers, pathetic – her words trickle off and stop entirely, although it takes him a moment to register the change. He risks glancing at her and finds her steady gaze on him, eyes bright and unreadable.

And then the words pour forth again, bursting out from her too fast as though she's nervous.

“Will, tonight, can I show you something in the mortal world could you come with me I need to show it to you please?”

He looks down at her. Frowns.

“Sutcliff...” he starts, warningly, as though she isn't already aware of what the answer is destined to be. “No. You spent too much time polluting my presence as it is; I am not going to accompany you out on some jaunt tonight. No.”

“Come _on_ ,” she wheedles. “It's All Hallows' Eve; practically our holiday! You've not got anything else to do but paperwork; won't you come out and enjoy yourself?”

“ _No._ ”

She pouts, and he glares, so she changes tack. “I'll fix your roof.”

This offer takes William entirely by surprise so, unbalanced, he weighs it up. Maintenance have said that they'll fix it, but they haven't got back to him as to a date and he's not sure he can work in these conditions for much longer. Whether they take a month or a day, his schedule is suffering every second that the infernal dripping pervades his ears.

“You're not to skive off work to do so,” he tells Grell and she claps her hands together in delight.

“Of course not, darling! I can do it tonight, if you want, before we go out. I'm sure you can find something to occupy yourself with whilst I do that. Oh – this is great! I'll come and find you at the end of the day, hm?”

And then, without waiting for an answer, she's off; humming to herself and beaming like a sun shaft through the black clouds that fill the day. William shakes his head, glad to be free of her but sorry to still be under the influence of the steady tapping of the rain, and he bleakly realizes that it really doesn't matter where exactly she's going to drag him that evening – if it gets rid of the water, it'll be worth it.

☔

Grell sings as she works, gentle, under her breath; it's gone half six, and the hole in the roof is stubborn. She's on the floor above their offices, and has found the source of the problem; the Administration department is flooded, and a dozen fat puddles glimmer across the floor, seeping down into the area below. She's wet and cold and beginning to get frustrated, but a little thing like this isn't going to best her. She's got a date, after all – hooked Will in with surprising ease.

By the end of the night he will be hers.

Her heart quickens at the thought of it. How will it affect him? What will he do? Will he come to her immediately and embrace her, kiss her, berate himself for having never taken the time to be with her before? Or will it be a subtle thing, noticeable slowly – perhaps a smile here, an acknowledgement there, until he slowly unfolds and lets her into his heart?

He would love her. That was the only line that she had asked for, and the only line to which Echo had agreed. She's a powerful spirit, Grell knows – it took her long enough to find out where she resided – and although reapers are expressly forbidden from dealing with spirits, nobody will know. She's just a lost soul, and she understands Grell's situation; that's why she has never moved on, isn't it? To ensure that her own tragedy doesn't reoccur to any other women. 

Two of the Administration ladies who have also been instructed to fix their floor are standing beside Grell, peering down into the eddies of the problem. “Once it stops raining, this won't even be a problem,” one says exasperatedly. “Can we not like, wait it out?”

“And what, work wearing wellies for another week? No thank you!” snorts the other, and moves off. They're both armed with mops, because their priority is their floor not Will's roof – so Grell considers her own end of the problem alone.

The floor is permeable, that's the problem. The water shouldn't be able to get through it at all, but there must be a crack or an imperfection above Will's office. This is annoying, because to tackle it, technically the most obvious option is to replace the whole floor, or at least cover it over with something waterproof – which Grell isn't equipped to do.

By the time seven pm rolls round, Grell is bored and the Administration ladies are gone, so she decides that a little property damage never hurt anyone a simply sticks her scythe through the floor.

It's at the opposite end of the puddle from where Will's roof is, and the water drains through the rend without complaint, pouring down onto some other unfortunate's desk below. She winces slightly, appreciating that she's just destroyed a large amount of paperwork and probably caused that individual several weeks' worth of overtime, but he's not here at the moment and thus will never know it was her.

She breathes a sigh of having done a job well, and banishes her scythe. They're never supposed to be used on anything physical – they're built for soul collection, nothing more – but that's why she upgraded hers so much. It's the best scythe in the department.

After about a minute, to her surprise she hears Will shout something shocking and loud.

“Grell Sutcliff,” he calls, at a volume that means he either knows that there's nobody else in the building or is so ecstatically relieved at the sudden lack of rain in his office that he can do nothing but release it at the top of his lungs, “I could kiss you!”

Grell flushes red, and wonders briefly if he means it. There's no harm in asking, she supposes, so returns back downstairs with a spring in her step.

“Did I hear something about ki-i-i-issing, my love?” She spreads her arms wide and throws herself at him, assuming that, desk-bound as he is, he will not be able to escape.

She's half right. A look of intense alarm flashes across Will's face, and, on the ball as he is, he shoves himself backward, chair and all. Unfortunately for him chairs are not made to move at and great speed or distance, so Grell only falls short of flinging her arms around his neck by a margin that brings her neatly to his knees instead.

The mortification in his eyes is crowned by the colour of his face, so she grins up at him – only to receive a boot to the face, kicking her away from him with no small force.

“It's a saying,” he hisses, and draws himself up close to his desk again. “I'm thankful that you've fixed the leaking problem – but that does not give you an excuse to put your hands on me.”

She's a bit upset, but only a bit. It's easy not to wince as she pushes herself to her feet again – her face may bruise, but it'll be gone by morning, as will his affinity toward hurting her. “You're only denying yourself,” she tells him, and this time he doesn't even look at her; head bent to focus on the paperwork before him. He'd seemed very distracted earlier - had the dripping been affecting him so much? Perhaps he's stressed.

“How much more of that do you have to go?” she murmurs, tilting her own head to read over his shoulder. “It wouldn't do to be late for this outing.”

They won't be, she's certain of that. The deadline's midnight, the witching hour – they'll have been and gone before that rolls round. But her beloved – it will soon be mutual, he'll love her too – doesn't need to know that.

“Give me ten minutes,” he says, still without looking at her. His pen moves with the sort of flurrying speed that promises mistakes, so she puts a hand on his shoulder and he does finally still and meet her eyes again.

The fatigue in them is shocking, and she almost breaks. He looks so very old and so very young, his beautiful cast features set in such blank dispassion that her heart clenches for him. He waits an eternity for her to speak, and she stumbles and stammers and tries to be herself in the light of his raw lack of feeling.

“I- Don't hurry yourself. You'll only have to go over it later. There's not- You can take time, Will. It's okay.”

He holds her gaze in absolute silence for another handful of heartbeats, and then nods thanks and slows himself to grace the papers with an even pace.

Grell watches the way his arm moves as he writes, the careful dexterity in his broad fingers, the breathing expanse of his back. After a while, she puts her elbows on his shoulders and places her chin on those to lean her skull against the side of his; he huffs slightly at the intrusion into his space but makes no complaint or evasion. He's warm, warm in a way that no creature so dead has any right to be, and she wonders if she should enchant him so under-handedly after all. If he wanted to love her, after all, he would.

But she can't not love him. It aches in her, the need for reciprocation; hurts her head, her heart. She must have his love; there is no question of it.

No, this is the only way.

She doesn't enjoy overtime, not when she's the one doing paperwork – but tonight she has no responsibility, no deadline to be met, and there's something terribly exciting about knowing that there's only herself and William in the block – perhaps in the building – and that he is so close, his presence almost unassuming and yet blinding her in his proximity. 

She kisses his neck, and feels him shudder, releasing a breath that sounds as though he's been holding it.

“Don't do that.”

“But you are so very gorgeous, my love.”

“It's inappropriate conduct for a workplace.”

Grell frowns very slightly, and leans to look at him better. “Are you suggesting that you'd be okay with it if we were not in the office?”

“...No. No, I wasn't implying that at all, and I'm sorry you can't seem to hear anything I say as not leading you on.”

She sighs, and he shifts himself slightly against her and adjusts his glasses.

It's ten to eight by the time that he decides he's done enough work – and she recognizes that he would do more if she wasn't hovering over him – and he casts his eyes over the pile that hasn't been touched in a despairing sort of way before standing.

“Where are we going?” he asks, the deep resignation in his tone more grating than anything else the evening has thrown up so far.

“It's... a surprise. You'll love it.” _You'll love me._

“I'm sure,” he says blankly, and without ceremony stands and retrieves his coat. Grell watches and more than appreciates the deftness of the action as he pulls it over his arms, the mechanical methodicality with which he buttons it across himself, well-fitted enough that it cuts his figure beautifully sharp. He turns up the collar as though somehow aware that they will be outside in the rain, and only then lifts his eyes to meet hers again. “Are we to walk or jump, Grell?”

The way her name drops from his lips, half impatient and half sceptical, makes her heart lurch in a way that is only marginally recognizable as desire, so far removed from ordinary lust as it is. Any man worth his salt can make her feel warm, but only William has ever managed to make her feel as though she is burning out.

“We jump,” she says, near breathless; takes his arm, and does so.


	2. Narcissus

☔

William stumbles out of the jump into the rain.

There's a _splash_ as his feet meet the surface of a puddle; it's cold on his calves, and deep enough that it covers both shoes. They'll be ruined, he knows, and so turns to snap at Grell about it, except he can't see her.

She's still there, because her hand is still locked around his wrist, squeezing him tight as though she's as scared that she'll lose him in the dark as he is. It's not quite pitch black, but everything is moving in the wind, casting monsters all around them and disallowing reliance on any vestige of sight. There's no light, which he realizes quite suddenly is due to a canopy of _leaves_ \- only shifting black masses, moaning and creaking all around them.

Grell adjusts her grip on him, shifting herself to clutch his hand instead of his wrist, and he doesn't dissuade her from doing so. It allows him to keep an equally strong hold on her, which is, in such an unfamiliar and unnavigable surrounding, absolutely something he wants to do.

“Grell,” he says, managing to keep his voice even – just. “Where are we?”

“It's a surprise,” she murmurs, sounding distracted – or perhaps not; perhaps the groaning of the trees and hammering of the rain is disguising her tone entirely. “Sorry that I couldn't jump us right there – it's too far out to get to directly from the office.”

“What? How far out are we?”

He should be able to sense that himself, if he tries – the ability to jump allows a great sense of orientation, and William is horrified to find that he can feel no familiar territory in any direction.

“Well...” Grell says, and he feels her turn and take a step backwards, pulling him along with him out onto drier – relative to the puddle – ground that is soft and seeping. “Far enough out that I can't jump straight back.”

“You _idiot_!” He doesn't mean to shout, but there seems little else to do – he tries to yank his hand away from hers but only succeeds in pulling her close to himself, holding her arm aloft as though trying to stop her from touching him. He can't see her expression, only the lashing of her hair in the wind, but imagines that she isn't smiling.

Her warp core is stronger than his – they've both known that for years now – and she has pair-jumped them here, thus expending twice as much energy. It's possible that William would be able to portal out of this whole messy ordeal, but only on his own. It would mean abandoning Grell.

“I'm not,” she says, quietly, and if he didn't know better he'd say she was hurt. She lowers their conjoined hands, her fingers safely interlocked around his. “We're perfectly safe. Come on – the sooner we get there the sooner we can get back.”

There's a catch in her voice that he doesn't quite recognize but can detect in spite of the rain, and he is tugged along in her wake, tethered only by the slim frame of one hand. It doesn't feel safe, certainly doesn't feel right – and to add to this, his mind throws up the fact that _Grell Sutcliff_ is willingly outside in a downpour without so much as a hat to protect her from the squalling elements. Something is deeply, deeply wrong, and on this certainty he stops again, steadfast, and holds her back.

“Grell, where are we going?”

She tugs at him as though gentle wordless persuasion will cause him to move, and then gives up abruptly. “I told you, it's a surprise, and it's not dangerous. And it's difficult to explain, so just – let me show you, alright? The sooner you've seen it the sooner we start making our way back.”

“I don't like surprises,” he replies stubbornly aware that it's not the most intelligent answer but with every second passing wanting more and more not to see whatever horrible disaster Grell has planted all the way out in this forest. “Tell me what it is or I will leave, Grell – wherever I end up will be more welcome than here.”

“You'd jump blind?” For a moment there is panic in her voice, and it increases his desire to pull away. “Don't. You don't know where you are – you'd never find your way back to the office.”

“Perhaps you should tell me, then.”

He wants to hit her, to knock some sense into her reckless head, but doesn't want to let go of her arm or risk flooring her. His temper is frayed and he can feel hers chaffing alongside it and they're both absolutely waterlogged, saturated with the rain. It's cold, and deeply unpleasant.

Grell is silent.

“I found it by accident,” she says evasively, eventually, but he can hear the lie ringing in her voice. “And I thought I should report it, but I wasn't sure, so I thought you should see it first. I didn't even make you miss work to do so, though, did I? I thought it'd be kinder to do it like this.”

The words are drenched in wary apology, but he knows she's not sorry for dragging him out here – and with a sudden startlement, he realizes that there is a possibility that she intends to kill him.

He wrenches his hand free of hers and hears her step backwards. “Will, don't-”

“What do you want from me?” he snaps; she's answered that again and again already, but he wants honesty. Surely she doesn't wish him harm – she's infatuated with him, for God's sake, and considers him a friend. She's never expressed a desire to hurt him since their final exam, and he doubts that she would start now. And, either way, in a clean fight – especially with her fatigued from having jumped them both out here – he will win.

It will not be a clean fight if she stabs him in the back.

“I just want you to see!” Grell snaps, raising her voice so that it cuts through the background storm, marking her as the most important point there. “I just want you to see – this – and now in addition to that I want you to know that I'm not doing anything stupid!”

They might be glaring at each other, but neither can see.

“Please,” she adds, softer now, voice melting into the rain. He wonders if she's shivering – the freezing wetness must be affecting her as badly if not worse than it is him.

“Take my hand,” they say in unison, and then stand in strained silence before William steps forward half reluctantly and finds her hand groping for his in the space between them. The contact is slippery and cold, an unfortunate effect of leather gloves in damp conditions.

He can hear Grell breathing as though attempting to calm herself down, and she says “Thank you.”

The tension in her grasp is a bad, bad sign, but she begins to walk, and he follows her lead. Picking their way around trees and shrubs is not easy in the dark, and made worse – much worse – by the unsettling noises of the wind, which parody large movements. After some time they come to the banks of a river; turgid and half-burst, the water is breakneck fast and roaring. William can't make out where the ground ends and the river begins, and its tangible anger masks all other sounds.

“Nearly there!” Grell calls, audible only just. “Only another five minutes to go, I think.”

William's skin crawls as they begin a shallow ascent, as though he can feel the unnatural presence of whatever it is that lurks awaiting them ahead. The terrain underfoot is mud, occasionally shot through with further overland streams, the ground bloated so full of water that it can hold no more. Ill-versed in physical geography, William has no idea whether this is a natural occurrence or not.

The top of his head is drummed upon by drops that fall as though aiming to hurt, and he's beginning to lose feeling in his extremities. Reapers cannot die from cold, but they can lose consciousness after prolonged exposure or unexpected temperatures.

He can feel Grell's eyes upon him as they crest the hill, and she stops.

William understands immediately both why she felt the need to report this and why she couldn't describe it. Relaying the scene through word of mouth would have caused him to dismiss it as one of her vapid fantasies.

There is a pool, in the most natural sense of the word; it appears to be the source of the river that they have followed up. At first he believes it to be frozen, mirror-surfaced as it is, but after a moment's observation he realizes that it is merely undisturbed. It isn't the strangest thing about the hollow in which it sits.

The strangest thing is that the hollow is washed white with moonlight, allowing nothing to be hidden, nothing to be missed.

The rain has not stopped; relentlessly it spatters down upon the leaves of the trees that encircle the pool, brooding and restless, and yet does not touch the lit ground, which sparkles wet and still. There is not a star in the sky, smogged over by the thick cloud, and yet the moon is as visible as though it is a clear night. It's wrong.

Looking back at Grell, he finds that he can make her out now; wide eyes on the sky and indecision warping her face. Apparently in response to his attention, she lowers her gaze and smiles horribly weakly at him.

“Will,” she says, in a way that betrays that she's not thinking about the dead water, or the rain, or reports. “Will, I...”

She lets herself loose from his hand, and raises her own to try and touch his face.

William steps backward into the circle of light and feels his mind _burst_.

His head rings, the light overbearing and all around him and sending lightning through his eyes even as his heart-rate skyrockets and his veins attempt to swell free of his skin. There's whispering all around him and suddenly he is hearing every word she's ever said to him, replayed from the past at a volume that is making his ears bleed as the words hiss past, tormented as his own self. He raises his hands to his ears and claws at them, aware of sinking to his knees even as Grell lets out a cry of alarm that's lost under her oscillating lost voice as she harks and harries and screams silence down his ears.

The voices fade gradually and the light blurs and seeps down to something dim and bearable, until the only sound is the racing _thud thud thud thud_ of his own heart and the haggard gasping of his own breath and he is able to unscrew his streaming eyes enough to see again.

Grell is standing above him, motionless, positioned as though she had moved forward to help him but was immobilized before reaching him. She's not breathing – the light paints her monochrome, catching the whites of her eyes and the half extended curl of her fingers toward him. The winds plays with her hair, letting it dance shimmering around her.

She is utterly beautiful, and William closes his eyes again when he realizes what she has done to him. He doesn't know how, but knows exactly why, and wants to weep that she felt she had to go to this length.

Composing himself, he stands with all the grace of an automaton, opens his eyes and listens to everything they tell him. His heart does not slow, and his legs don't want to move, and his arms are as leaden as his vocals.

There's no happiness in her face as he closes the space between them, but no despair as he kisses her, gentle and mechanical, because he has to. Her lips are as cold as his own must be, and she makes no move to deepen the kiss, but wraps her hands around his waist even as he clutches her by fistfuls of her wild hair. A chasm rends through him, aching even though he is as close as her as he can be, because he doesn't _want_ her – he only loves her. He loves her as much as he ever will and certainly more than he ever should, more than he is able to, and the simultaneous knowledge that it is both wholly artificial and cripplingly strong is agony.

So he pulls away from her, still panting like a bellows because he cannot control himself and he's terrified and he's angry and none of it is aimed at her, because it runs off her like the rain does, because he loves her entirely and it hurts.

Grell is still not breathing, and tilts her head at him, frowning a little. He waits for her to say something - anything - and yet she does not. She raises two fingers to her face and bites her lip.

William turns on his heel and tries to hate her, tries to be disgusted at what she has done to him, but can find only himself at fault. He should never have let her trail after him for so many years; should never have ignored her to the point that she felt that a brutal forcing of love is better than no love at all. The shining, still basin of water mocks him, and the moon radiates soft apologies in the rain.

There's a heaviness in his chest that feels as though it's crushing the back of his throat, holding him still and distracting him as he tries to think. Eventually he turns back, and asks, “Why have you done this to me?”

“Why have _you_ done this to _me_?” Grell counters, voice full of bitterness, and he can see decades of loneliness in her eyes, and a beaten heart bleeding from her sleeve. He expects further angry words, but is punished with her silence.

“...How?” he says at last, weakly, because whether he deserves it or not Grell still has no right to this darkest brand of magic.

Mute, she points downward, guiding his eyes to his feet. 

William follows the unspoken instruction, and finds that the undergrowth is flowers. They're white with yellow centres, and easy to recognize; daffodils. There seems no special significance to them other than that they have no business blooming in October, until he remembers their true name.

_Narcissus._

He knows then exactly where they are and how she did this and looks up sharply, but manages only, “What have you d-”

She elbows him hard in the back, a distracted sneer beginning to form on her radiant face, and, taken off guard by the action that he should have seen coming, he falls at the force of the blow. Sprawling too close to the pool he attempts immediately to stand again, but Grell kicks him in the throat and he reels backward again, gasping.

As she stands over him William recognizes both the absolute lack of feeling in her eyes and that he is going to die.

“Grell-”

He wants to plead, to beg forgiveness for the years they haven't had together and make promises that he doesn't understand and assure her that he loves her, but he doesn't because she raises one foot and steps down across his larynx. She applies pressure, and abruptly there's no wet ground beneath William's head any more; the water of the calm pool is freezing and floods into his mouth with intent enough that it could be alive.

He can't see her now, the haze of the water obscuring all sight of what lies above its surface, and the terror flooding through his body is sheer instinct – his mind is detached from the reality in which he finds himself now. It all hurts, and he tries to shout but only succeeds in swallowing water. It tastes brackish, like death.

Her heel threatens to cut the skin of his neck, and even though it is not imperative that he breathe the sensation of being drowned is far from nice. He doesn't struggle, knowing that he will only hurt himself more in doing so, and tries frantically to find a rational way of freeing himself. Scrabbling at the sodden hem of her trouser has no effect; attempting to move his head only results in further pressure being applied.

He can't hurt her, not now, not in any way. If she presses much further then his neck will break, which will not kill him but will be an agony of the like that he has never experienced before, and whether he will regain consciousness within any reasonable space of time is doubtful. He doesn't want it to happen, but is failing to do anything to protect himself.

Grell is going to snap his neck and he can do nothing but let her.

The angle he's bent back at already feels as though it will not be quiet repairable, and in a last weak motion he tries to grasp something, anything on the ground to help him.

His fingers claw mud and uproot daffodils, desperate, and there's a bright point on the back of his neck which is white-hot with strain, and his lungs are heaving water in and out even as he splutters and begins to thrash, because he does not want to die. Not here, not now. Not like this.

Her heel lifts unexpectedly, and William's head breaks the water as though he is reborn, and a pain lances through his chest with more potency that he has ever experienced.

It's electric, and it rips through his drowned lungs easily as the flesh is so swollen by the water. Another excruciating tendril joins it, and a third, and he's coughing water blind even as he feels himself twist and burst into something terrible, something new.

William's cracked stone heart decays to wood even as his bones petrify, and his ribs collapse in on themselves even as he explodes outward, a hundred points of rapid growth that pinprick his skin and core him through.

Everything is white.


	3. November

☔

When Grell awakens, it is to birdsong and the feather-thin rays of dawn sunshine that first creep across the land. She's on her back in an incredibly uncomfortable position, and feels as though she has been wrung out and left limp to dry, or to die. Neither would matter.

By the time the Echo had left her, squeezing out between the pores of her brain to abandon her to the night, William had already been killed and she had been unable to prevent that. She didn't try hard enough.

The aftermath of possession tastes sour, and Grell finds her mouth sand-paper dry. Her clothes are dry too, and stiff, and her limbs don't want to move.

Her eyes don't want to open either; not for the birds, not for the light. Not for the warped reminder that she has led her lover to his death as surely as had she put a scythe through him herself.

She'd watched the agony on his face when he had crossed the line and fallen in love with her, watched the way it had nearly broken him completely. She had been a fool to believe that he was capable of carrying such an emotion within him. She has been a fool in every way.

The Echo had caught her as soon as she'd stepped after him into the light; wrapped itself within her and worn her body like a coat. She'd sensed its dissatisfaction, its sick desire to harm, and it had held her very still and tested her movements, bit by bit. Each finger, each toe. Her body had felt heavy, utterly numbed by the invasive presence of the spirit; and it had spoken to her, sinking its words into the sponge of her mind like venom.

 _Done,_ it had said at first. _Done, done, done._ It had flooded her mind with love, and let her taste William's lips; a snatched handful of what they could have been. It had held him with her hands, felt the contours of his body and let him slip away.

She'd read its intentions in its ringing thoughts, and begun to scream, only to be hushed by its delicate strands buried deep within her conscious, soothed. _Anything,_ it reminded her. _Anything, he sees you. He loves you._

 _He can't love me if he's dead!_ He couldn't do anything if he was dead. Grell had found, quite suddenly, that she didn't need his affections whatsoever if the price was his self. She should not have taken him here. 

_Dead? Not dead. Alive, always. Yours, always._ Information had been stuffed unwanted into her head; the Echo's sphere of influence was only one place, its effects only permanent if forced within the night. And when she had further protested, it had turned upon her, assaulting her with her own looped memories of William. He hit her, he hit her, he kicked her, he hit her, and the Echo forced her to feel the colour of each blow as the bruises re-blossomed upon her skin even as her weight held William struggling under water, killing him.

She'd seen the incredulous hope in his eyes when he had been released, and watched his body arch and convulse as a branch burst through his chest, watched his bedraggled form harden and stretch and transform. She'd heard him scream as he became something needlessly beautiful, hideously warped.

The Echo had held her still, disallowed her to look away. It had stepped forward when the monstrous change had been complete; extended Grell's hand and ran it across the smooth, hard, living exterior of her lover's shell.

The rain had stopped, and then the Echo had wormed its way out from within her and vanished.

The wind in the trees dropped, and Grell was aware only of isolation before she forgot.

She remembers it now. She imagines only one day has passed, but perhaps it is ten, perhaps it is twenty. Perhaps a century has watched her lie pale, dehydrating under a thousand warm sunsets.

She opens her eyes, and watches the willow's branches sway gently in the wind. They're yellow; an autumnal colour, bright and happy against the clear blue sky.

They're yellow like narcissus flowers, daffodils, but there's none of those here. They're spring colours, new life. Their stems lie crushed and rotting underneath a carpet of crackling leaves, bronzed over in death, becoming a part of the mud in which they grew.

Grell sits up, and takes in the golds, the oranges, the browns, the reds. She wants to see green, but there's none.

The willow's roots suck at the side of an empty hollow, no trace of a spring to be seen. Water should collect there, it's obvious – but it's as bone dry as the rest of the hillside. The trees that pen her in are bare, black branches, cold and devoid of empathy for her loss.

The willow alone looks alive, its encompassing drapes drooping low enough that she can almost touch them, and her bitterness overflows very suddenly, and she stands.

He may as well be dead. The words meant nothing, the thoughts meant nothing – William is gone. There's a tree to mark his grave, as there was a flower to mark the self-satisfied passage of Narcissus, long before Grell's time. Echo's tragedy will repeat itself so long as there are women who love, and men who cannot.

That bitch used her to murder the only being she has ever deeply loved, played her like a clockwork doll, and having successfully ruined another life, vanished into the ether on the stroke of twelve. Grell is angry – Grell is _furious_ , the feeling sharpened by grief, and has no idea how to neutralize the problem, so she slams her scythe through the body of the willow, leaving a gaping hole.

It's not quite sap that oozes forth from the wound and not quite water; it gushes black and trickles down the bark, leaving streaks that betray pain. The willow weeps, and Grell puts a hand to the fluid.

“I'm sorry,” she breathes, and smears a path down the bark. She's not apologizing for the cut.

Turning her back on the tree is no disrespect; she sits again, abruptly, and wipes at her eyes. They feel puffy and swollen, but she will not be the one to reintroduce water to the scene.

There's no more whispering and no more lies, but the willow tree murmurs as a breeze touches its limbs and gives it voice. Grell hunches herself up, spine to its trunk, and buries her face in her knees, safe for a time in the quiet solitude of denial. She's taken a walk. William is at the office. Everything is fine.

But the willow tree murmurs and the breeze runs its cold hands through her hair; kisses her lips; gets inside her and won't go away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a spooky Halloween fic but I'm not certain if it counts or not?


End file.
